View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Doug Groenhoff caught bright Mars – brightest starlike object in the sky for most of the night now – above a mountain near Tucson, Arizona, on October 12. Doug wrote: “Mars rising over the Catalina Mountains, Tucson, Arizona. About 15 minutes after sunset. Day before its max opposition.”
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Nancy Ricigliano captured Mars from Long Island, New York, on October 6, using a Celestron 11-inch telescope. She wrote: “I had this telescope for three years. I could never get it collimated right. The week before I said I’m going to get this once and for all. I finally did it and this was my reward.” Thank you, Nancy.View at EarthSky Community Photos. | John Nelson took these photos of Mars from August to October 2020, from Puget Sound, Washington, using a 12-inch Meade LX850 telescope. He wrote: “This is a composite featuring separate images of Mars during a two month progression from August 8th leading to its closest approach to Earth on October 6th. Mother Nature was very kind, offering clear skies in the Pacific Northwest at regular intervals for two months. I’ve been waiting for two years to do this…ever since the 2018 Mars opposition.”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | John Nelson captured Mars at its closest approach to Earth on October 6, using a 12-inch telescope. Of the photo processing John wrote: “11,108 frames were captured over a period of 87 seconds. Pipp was used to crop and debayer the video sequence. Autostakkert3 was used to align the frames, select the best 2000 and stack them and produce a .png image which I then took into Registax6 for wavelets processing to sharpen and bring out detail. Finishing touches to contrast and lighting applied in Lightroom. Having close cropped the video sequence, I used PhotoshopElements9 to set the image in a wider field black background for asthetic purposes.”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Wo Wehali in Atlanta, Georgia caught these images of Mars. He wrote, “Here is a collage of images I’ve taken of Mars from August through the day Mars was closest to Earth, on October 6. In terms of detail, this has been a much better apparition than 2018!” And it’s not over yet. On October 13, Earth will pass between Mars and the sun.View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Helio C. Vital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil captured Mars very close to the moon on October 2, 2020. In this photo, Mars is about in the 8 o’clock position. Helio wrote: “By very little, the close encounter failed to become a grazing occultation. Only 4 arcminutes separated Mars from the lunar limb.”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Brian Ottum caught the moon and Mars on October 2, 2020. In this photo, Mars is the tiny dot in the upper right. He wrote: “I took this from my remote control telescope located in the New Mexico desert. Cloudy here in Michigan, so am happy to see it ‘virtually.'”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Eliot Herman caught the moon just after full with Mars nearby, on October 2, 2020, from Tucson, Arizona. In this photo, Mars is in the upper left. He wrote: “The moon and Mars were really beautiful.”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Steven Bellavia caught Mars through a telescope from Mattituck, New York, at 10:41 p.m. September 30, 2020. That’s October 1 at 02:41 UTC. Thank you, Steven!View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Marcelo Barbosa in Texas captured this telescopic image of Mars on September 27, 2020. Mars will reach its once-in-2-years opposition on October 13. That’s when Earth will pass between Mars and the sun, bringing the planet closest to us for this 2-year period. Earth and Mars are already close, and the planet now shines brightly in our night sky. Plus the telescopic view of Mars is nearly at its best now! Thank you, Marcelo!View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Joel Weatherly in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, caught the northern lights and Mars rising in the same view, September 26, 2020. He wrote: “This image features some of my favorite autumn sights, including the aurora borealis, Pleiades, and Mars. This week’s geomagnetic unrest has allowed for multiple nights of aurora observations here in Alberta. Mars has also been an incredible sight to observe, with its signature hue showing up plainly to the unaided eye.”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Veteran meteor observer Eliot Herman in Tucson used an automatic all-sky camera to capture this cool image of a bright meteor and Mars over Tucson, Arizona, on September 22, 2020. He wrote: “Looks like it was shot from Mars – not really, of course – but it does look like Mars shot it toward Earth. First time I have caught such a conjunction.” View this image full-sized. Thank you, Eliot!View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Paulette Haws captured the planet Mars this past Monday evening, September 21, 2020. Mars is very bright now and fiery red, rising in the east not long after sunset. In this photo, Mars is shining above, and reflected in, Little Tupper Lake in New York state. Thanks, Paulette!View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Aurelian Neacsu in Visina, Dambovita, Romania, captured this telescopic view of Mars on September 16, 2020. You can’t see much of Mars’ surface when the red planet is at its farthest from Earth. But – as Earth catches up to Mars in the race of the planets – the distance between our two worlds is shrinking. Thank you, Aurelian!View at EarthSky Community Photos. | David Kakuktinniq at Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Canada, also captured red Mars gleaming through the aurora borealis on September 12, 2020. He wrote: “Northern Lights over the Hudson Bay, with Mars near the center of the image.”View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Kaiih Henson captured the moon and Mars in the sky over a brightly lit construction site in Somerset, England. Kaiih wrote: “Fishing at Lilstock Beach, the full moon and Mars dueted in the night sky whilst building continues on the new Hinkley Point nuclear powerstation, unaware of the STELLAR performance happening above.” Thank you, Kaiih!View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Abigail Atienza wrote: “I just want to share a photo of the waning gibbous moon and the red planet Mars (on the right) with the northern lights in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. September 6, 2020, 9:20 p.m. Road to Nowhere.” Thank you, Abigail! See more photos of early September’s moon and Mars.View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Eliot Herman captured this dramatic view of Mars this past weekend, when it was near the moon: “Moon and Mars clearing the ridgeline in Tucson, Arizona. The close conjunction of the moon and bright near-opposition Mars was a striking sight. The terminator of the moon shows the terrain picking up light on the craters and mountains leading to the observed discontinuities [the jagged appearance of the upper edge of the moon].” Thank you, Eliot! See more photos of early September’s moon and Mars.View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Kannan A in Singapore captured the moon and Mars around 6:30 a.m. on September 5, 2020. He wrote: “The waning gibbous moon and planet Mars seen in the morning, descending toward the northwest of Singapore.” Thank you, Kannan A.See more photos of early September’s moon and Mars.
Bottom line: Photos from the EarthSky community of the bright planet Mars, at its best. Earth passed between Mars and the sun – bringing the planet to a once-in-two-years opposition – on October 13, 2020.
Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Prior to that, she had worked for the University of Texas McDonald Observatory since 1976, and created and produced their Star Date radio series. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. In 2020, she won the Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the largest organization of professional astronomers in North America. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says.
Claudia Crowley proofs and edits EarthSky website material. She says working for EarthSky is the most exciting job she's had except one other - which was editing space shuttle documentation at NASA JSC. After writing and editing manuals for Dell and other major companies, she moved to the technical support side during the wild early days of the Internet, and served as general manager at a small wireless ISP. Claudia is a space enthusiast and fan of science.
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